Uneventful ride for me this morning. Looks like it may be a wet week of sorts however. This after spending a lot of time on the weekend pulling the bike apart and cleaning all the grime out. Wake up to wet roads, but no rain, and just think what a waste of time cleaning. But I know it wasnt a waste of time as the bike ran so much smoother than the grinding of last week.

After hitting the 10k mark last week and even leading up to it actually, I have found I am struggling with motivation. I know I mentioned this last week, but it is hitting me harder. I think it may simply be because of winter and the rain and I am hoping I will be fine once spring/summer hit. Part of it is not having a major goal to aim for anymores. I simply dont have the time left in the year to go for 20k and 15k simply doesnt have that oomph about it and I think I will hit that nmark anyways. How do I spice up the daily grind???

So... warmer weather this week. It was almost too warm with the top underlayer and longs on. I might remove the top underlayer for the ride home.

I wiped down the bike on Sunday night so of course the roads were wet from the rains and so dirt was placed back on the bike on the ride into work. At least it wasn't raining.

I had an MGIF decide to floor it to pass me to get to the red light 30 metres ahead... It was quite amusing because then he decided to go into the left lane (it was clear of cars with the right lane already having two cars in it so I knew he'd do it). So a few seconds after he'd gone into the left lane and stopped at the light there is little ol' me coming around him and plonking myself in the bike box right in front of him. Nice work mate. Not a dangerous manoeuvre by him but it did make me smile that he just HAD to overtake me so close to the lights to park and wait at said lights for the light to change. Then I had a clip-in failure in front of him (actually it wasn't intentional - lucky I was wearing longs or the back of my heel might be sporting a scrape. ) which slowed me down a little more in getting off the line.

Good ride in - the traffic was queued up in Collins St more than usual so I had to slow down to pass them safely, but it was nice doing the whole "I'm on a bike sailing past you all as you stay stuck in traffic".

The V/Line trains are back in action, so yesterday was the first commute in two weeks. Uneventful ride to and from Southern Cross station. I didn't feel quick but my mate said we were sitting on 38km/h all along Lorimer St, which made me feel good. This morning's commute was pretty warm! A nice change from full winter tights.

I told a small lie above. I did a part car/bike commmute on Friday - had to drop the car off for a service, and rode in with a workmate from Camberwell to Port Melbourne. The ride was great, we detoured to My Sista Says just off Bay St for a cuppa before work. The return trip to Camberwell was interesting. We were riding along the segregated path in front of Melbourne Convention Centre before you get to the Crown shared strip. A family was crossing from the grass area to the pedestrian walking section. We rang our bells so they knew we were there and slowed down. The father looked in our direction and called the kid to cross as we were approaching. No worries, we were expecting kids to do what kids do. In the opposite direction, another bike comes screaming down with the fella screaming at the family, "This is a bike path, get off the bike path yadda yadda..." This will not end well. Two seconds later, bang and crash! The commuter came together with a girl about 5-10 years old. Girl was crying, dad was screaming and threatening to beat the cyclist to a pulp and reporting him to the police. The cyclist had crashed in a heap and was assessing the bike for damage. All of this could have been avoided. We stopped and waited until it looked the situation wasn't going to escalate and then continued our commute home.

TailWind wrote:You could let us come within a few kms of your total and then toy with us a bit

the way my company is going....may be out of the commuting race sooner than later...but hopefully later. The race to offshore our jobs is never ending and seems to be speeding up

you may get your wish TW

That's not quite the go-slow I had in mind for your commutes - hope it all works out!

TW...as you should know or be aware of...the IT industry in Aus is nearly dead. Offshoring is a failed solution in all areas except where it counts for managers...in dollars. As such it will continue to happen. There will always be a few jobs in Aus for IT, specialised areas and minimal headcount required, but overall if the job can be done from overseas, it will go there.

It is only a matter of time before my job is gone but at the same time I am not worried. Its not like it is going to be a sudden shock lol. I will take it with the approach that it is the change that I need in life and wherever it takes me it takes me.

TW...as you should know or be aware of...the IT industry in Aus is nearly dead. Offshoring is a failed solution in all areas except where it counts for managers...in dollars. As such it will continue to happen. There will always be a few jobs in Aus for IT, specialised areas and minimal headcount required, but overall if the job can be done from overseas, it will go there.

It is only a matter of time before my job is gone but at the same time I am not worried. Its not like it is going to be a sudden shock lol. I will take it with the approach that it is the change that I need in life and wherever it takes me it takes me.

It isn't even always cheaper. I maybe only one left from a team of five, with their jobs outsourced. The outsourcing is more expensive than the four guys who left (and were not replaced), even though the outsourcing folks that replaced them have almost no experience.

The main "saving" is on the FTE head count, which is set at some arbitrary number. We have had no new FTE starters in almost 2 years. Teams keep getting smaller, workload keeps increasing.

queequeg wrote:It isn't even always cheaper. I maybe only one left from a team of five, with their jobs outsourced. The outsourcing is more expensive than the four guys who left (and were not replaced), even though the outsourcing folks that replaced them have almost no experience.

The main "saving" is on the FTE head count, which is set at some arbitrary number. We have had no new FTE starters in almost 2 years. Teams keep getting smaller, workload keeps increasing.

dont want to hijack this commute thread...but...queequeg your right..it isnt cheaper, just on bean counters books. Onshore are constantly having to fix up/assist/do the work for offshore

I have said to many people, would love management to actually run a true costing exercise of the solution to see the true cost, but they never will, as the different levels of management dont want to rock the boat and then have themselves targeted

queequeg wrote:It isn't even always cheaper. I maybe only one left from a team of five, with their jobs outsourced. The outsourcing is more expensive than the four guys who left (and were not replaced), even though the outsourcing folks that replaced them have almost no experience.

The main "saving" is on the FTE head count, which is set at some arbitrary number. We have had no new FTE starters in almost 2 years. Teams keep getting smaller, workload keeps increasing.

dont want to hijack this commute thread...but...queequeg your right..it isnt cheaper, just on bean counters books. Onshore are constantly having to fix up/assist/do the work for offshore

I have said to many people, would love management to actually run a true costing exercise of the solution to see the true cost, but they never will, as the different levels of management dont want to rock the boat and then have themselves targeted

Their KPI's are based around cutting fixed costs obviously. What better way than outsourcing, yet your variable costs go up beyond what your fixed costs ever were. Go figure!

Did my good deed for the day yesterday on the way home. Found a rather wet and muddy golden retriever wandering around. He had a collar on with number and address. Phoned number, no reply. Address was close by so I found the house and put him in the yard.

Was a lovely morning for a bike ride....tried to take it easy and simply enjoy the morning..I think I was 80% successful in doing that. It was so nice to actually see the sun without it being hidden behind clouds.

Crazy weather in Perth overnight- riding home in a 70-90km/h head/crosswind with little respite apart from it didn't rain (wet roads though). Hard work at the way home (the endless incline so to speak), woke this morning to find the wind had shifted to a southerly but around 40km/h, so struggled to work with a headwind again feeling shattered after last nights efforts. BOM/Seabreeze is saying the southerly will still be around this evening- might have a go at a few KOMs/PRs if feeling okay (highly doubtful)

Oh picked up my first KOM last night with the final 2km to home being a direct tailwind- cheating- nah, not using performance enhancing winds (PEWs)

CXCommuter wrote:Oh picked up my first KOM last night with the final 2km to home being a direct tailwind- cheating- nah, not using performance enhancing winds (PEWs)

PEW PEW!!! It all makes sense now what the lasers are actually telling us.

Yesterday evening I had to go to South Yarra/Toorak for a meeting at 6PM. So I took the bike to go home straight afterwards. I rode along the Main Yarra Trail from Fed Square and crossed over at the pedestrian bridge at the bottom of Anderson St. Then I had to get onto the north (?) side MYT... Oh. My. Gods.

It was absolute mayhem. I know it is probably worsened by the closure of the south (?) side pontoons, but... Pedestrians in dark clothes, lots and lots of cyclists in both directions, headlights blazing, dark path, not a lot of space. I didn't go my usual road speed, but cyclists were passing me very quickly and darting in and out of people. I hopped off the trail at Church St so probably just got the busiest part of it, but wow... It was B.U.S.Y and I did not feel safe or comfortable.

I have to say that I prefer riding on the roads... Yes, that's right. Riding on the roads and possibly getting doored or SMIDSY'd by a car is preferable to riding that stretch of shared path at that time of night.

Anyway, I hopped off the shared path and went to the Church/Chapel St lights and had to do a little manoeuvre (because I didn't want to ride along Chapel St) which necessitated me using the ped crossing. I thought I'd try and get out of the way of the peds by moving forward so I could ride off faster, but I failed to factor in that when the lights changed I had to give way to more peds on my left and since I'd gone to the front I'd moved in front of an older lady who said to me (because she then had to go around my back wheel to cross) "How rude!". I apologised to her as I had got in her way but it didn't make for a great ending to my new route experience.

Dumb Cyclist right here:

The ride home from the meeting was on the roads. Less cars and backstreets made for a much nicer ride. And I had nice cars who didn't toot me when I was riding outside the bike *cough* door zone *cough* lane in one backstreet. That was nice.

So this morning I was back to my lovely road and bicycle lanes. Much less stressful than the shared path, even with cars. Probably because when I have to claim the whole lane I have the whole 3.5m or whatever it is to move around in instead of a small shared path.

Hooting along on a fast section of my night shift commute doing ~40kmh. It was still quite light and i didn't have my headlight on yet, or my eyes/concentration on. Grey kangaroo jumps out in front and we both sheet. I yelled out HEY as I jammed on the front brake and the roo does a couple of mighty hops up to speed in front of me. I could hear her claws biting into the chip seal as she accelerated away while I had the anchors out.I could feel the wash of adrenaline as it happened, but didn't notice much on the HRM. I did think to look after we both took evasive action Always wondered if that feeling would result in a HR rise if you are exercising. Turns out not for me if the rate is already up

Is it spring already??? 15.5C at my place at 4am as I got ready to head out - forecast for today is a top of 21C . There was a brisk notherly to blow me into the Melbourne CBD. Unfortunately, the northerly will be around for the rest of the day, so this afternoon might be warm, wet and windy.